Oral Cancer News – Page 315 – The Oral Cancer Foundation News Archive

ASCO updates guideline on chemotherapy and radiation protectants

Source: www.medscape.com Author: Nick Mulcahy In its first issuance since 2002, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has released an updated guideline on the use of protectants for chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The update provides new guidance on the use of palifermin, the only new protectant approved by the US Food and Drug Administration since 2002, as well as new or deleted recommendations for amifostine and dexrazoxane. The updated guideline, published online November 17 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, also addresses the concern that protectant agents could compromise tumor response and survival. Palifermin, a recombinant keratinocyte growth factor, was approved for prophylaxis against severe mucositis associated with hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation in hematologic malignancies. It represents "an advance for the field," write the guideline authors, cochaired by Martee L Hensley, MD, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York City, and Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. Because of the growing body of evidence on amifostine use in the prevention of esophagitis, the ASCO panel of experts decided to add a new section on this topic in the chemoradiotherapy setting for non–small-cell lung cancer. Updates on amifostine also include guidance on its use for both chemotherapy and radiation-therapy toxicities. With regard to dexrazoxane, the panel made only 1 change from the previous guidelines: guidance on its use in patients receiving high-dose anthracycline therapy has been deleted because of insufficient data. However, the panel highlighted its previous and ongoing recommendation that this agent not be [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-25T22:27:09-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

What to expect: HPV vaccine Gardasil for men

Source: www.vaccinerx.com Author: written by Vaccind Rx Daily Staff The four-type (6,11,16,18) human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil® is also effective in men according to the primary analysis from a pivotal phase III clinical study. In previously uninfected men aged 16 to 26 years*, Gardasil® prevented 90% (95%CI: 69, 98) of external genital lesions caused by HPV types 6, 11, 16 or 18. The data were presented this week at the congress of the European Research Organisation on Genital Infection and Neoplasia (EUROGIN) in Nice, France.1 The study was designed to determine the efficacy of Gardasil® in preventing HPV 6,11,16 or 18- related 'external genital lesions' a composite endpoint that included genital warts, penile / perineal / perianal lesions† (PIN, PIN2/3; potential pre-cursors to cancer) and penile / perineal / perianal cancer. In the study, Gardasil was 90.4% effective in reducing external genital lesions (3 cases in the vaccine group vs 31 cases in the placebo group; 95% CI:69.2, 98.1). All three cases observed in the HPV vaccinated group were of genital warts, resulting in a vaccine efficacy of 89.4% (95% CI [65.5, 97.9]) in preventing genital warts in men. There were no cases of penile / perineal / perianal lesions in the vaccinated group vs. 3 cases in the placebo group. There were no cases of penile / perineal / perianal cancer in either group. At the time of this analysis, the study had a mean duration of about 29 months. No HPV vaccine-related serious adverse events were reported. A [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-25T22:12:42-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Health officials not convinced snus will help smokers quit

Source: www.theintelligencer.net Author: staff They're discreet, flavorful and come in cute tin boxes with names like ''frost'' and ''spice.'' And the folks who created Joe Camel are hoping Camel Snus will become a hit with tobacco lovers tired of being forced outside for a smoke. But convincing health officials and smokers like Ethan Flint that they're worth a try may take some work. Snus - Swedish for tobacco, rhymes with ''noose'' - is a tiny, tea bag-like pouch of steam-pasteurized, smokeless tobacco to tuck between the cheek and gum. Aromatic to the user and undetectable to anyone else, it promises a hit of nicotine without the messy spitting associated with chewing tobacco. Just swallow the juice. ''I think I'd rather throw up in my mouth,'' says Flint, an 18-year-old West Virginia University student, emerging from a convenience store with a pack of Winstons and a coupon for free Camel Snus. ''I'd rather not swallow anything like that.'' Reynolds America Inc., the nation's No. 2 tobacco company, can also expect resistance from the public health community. Experts wonder whether snus will help wean people off cigarettes and snuff, or just foster a second addiction. While snus has been around, it hasn't been prominent in this country. ''I think we're all holding our breath in terms of what's going to be coming down the pike,'' says Dorothy Hatsukami, director of the Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of Minnesota. ''There's not much known about these products - what's in these products, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-24T12:13:24-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Reynolds American to sell dissolvable tobacco

Source: biz.yahoo.com Author: Vinnee Tong Reynolds American gave details to investors Monday about its latest smokeless tobacco products, saying that it would begin selling Camel brand dissolvable tobacco products in mid- to late January in three trial markets. The nation's second-biggest tobacco company said that dissolvable strips, orbs and sticks -- made from finely milled tobacco -- will be sold early next year, starting in Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; and Portland, Ore. They come in fresh and mellow flavors. Among their biggest selling points for smokers, who have fewer and fewer places to light up, is that there is no spitting and nothing left to throw away. Cigarette companies are trying to find new ways of selling tobacco as cigarette demand has fallen because of smoking bans, health concerns and social pressure. They are focusing more on cigars and smokeless products such as moist snuff, chewing tobacco and snus. Anti-tobacco groups objected last month when Reynolds first said it would begin selling dissolvable tobacco. "These new products pose serious threats to the nation's health," a statement from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said then. "They are likely to appeal to children because they are flavored and packaged like candy, are easy to conceal even in a classroom and carry the Camel brand that is already so popular with underage smokers." Reynolds, which sells Camel, Kool and American Spirit cigarettes, defended the new dissolvable tobacco in part by saying the products come in child-resistant packs. The company's dissolvable tobacco products come in [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T18:01:10-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Cost of smoking still staggering

Source: www.pe.com Author: Lora Hines The number of smokers nationwide dropped last year, but the amount of money they rack up in health care and financial losses is on the rise, according to federal health officials. In 2007, more than 43 million people smoked, compared to an estimated 45 million smokers in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the decrease, average annual smoking-related costs reached nearly $100 billion between 2001 and 2004, compared to $75 billion in 1998, the agency found. Smoking's total annual economic burden comes close to $195 billion, which includes lost productivity. The CDC released the information as the American Cancer Society today marks its 32nd Great American Smokeout, the organization's annual campaign to encourage people to quit smoking. Tobacco use still is the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the United States, according to the society. Smoking causes an estimated 438,000 people to die prematurely every year. That includes 38,000 deaths of nonsmokers because of secondhand smoke. Half of all people who keep smoking will die from smoking-related diseases, the organization says. "Quitting smoking is the most important step smokers can take to improve their health and protect the health of nonsmoking family members," said Janet Collins, director of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. State Program Praised Meanwhile, UC San Francisco researchers earlier this year concluded that the California Tobacco Control Program saved the state $86 billion in health-care costs between [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T17:56:17-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Battle of his life

Source: www.hattiesburgamerican.com Author: Patrick Magee Barney Farrar has never been one to back down from any type of fight. The Mississippi native is a determined man whose tenacity makes him a passionate coach and dogged recruiter as a member of the Southern Miss football team's coaching staff. He's also known as a compassionate man who will make a visit on his own to the ailing parents of one of the countless high school coaches he's gotten to know over his lengthy career of recruiting his home state. So when word came down in July that Farrar had been diagnosed with throat cancer, the reaction sent waves around the close community of football coaches. He received many calls from coaching cohorts wishing him well. Once the kind words were behind him, Farrar battened down for the biggest battle of his life, which has yet to reach a full conclusion. "They diagnosed it as a category three, but they moved it up to a category four because of the size of the tumor. That scared me," Farrar said. "They told me to not be too alarmed over that at that point because it was just the size that moved me into the worst category." From there, it was a matter of finding the right course of treatment for the lump in his throat that doctors say had likely been there for a year, when he was living in Iowa, before it was diagnosed by Hattiesburg physicians. Farrar, 48, visited different clinics around [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T17:51:28-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Eli Lilly buys majority of ImClone in tender offer

Source: money.cnn.com Author: staff Drug developer Eli Lilly & Co. said Friday it completed a tender offer worth about $6 billion for ImClone Systems Inc., marking Lilly's biggest buyout in the biotechnology industry. The company announced the $70-per-share tender offer in October. The bid topped two prior offers from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which is ImClone's partner on the blockbuster drug Erbitux. Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly bought about 85.4 million shares of New York-based ImClone, representing about 95 percent of the outstanding stock. The company plans to complete the buyout through a short-form merger on or about Nov. 24. in which all remaining shares of ImClone will be converted into the right to receive $70 per share in cash. With the buyout, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly adds the blockbuster colon and head and neck cancer drug Erbitux to its list of products. Eli Lilly, which sells a range of treatments from Byetta for diabetes to Cymbalta for depression, has been bulking up its biotechnology capabilities along with several other large pharmaceutical companies. Eli Lilly already gets about a third of its annual revenue from biotechnology drugs, which are developed using living cells instead of chemical compounds. The company has already invested $1 billion into a biotech center in Indianapolis, while building a biotech facility in Ireland.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T09:40:56-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Experts say new tobacco product targets young adults

Source: www.marketwatch.com Author: staff New research at West Virginia University is examining whether a smokeless, spitless tobacco product aimed at young adults is catching on. And the researchers have found that RJ Reynolds' Camel Snus - touted as a socially acceptable way to satisfy addiction - contains surprisingly high levels of nicotine. "Camel Snus contains more nicotine than most other snuff products," said Bruce Adkins of the state Division of Tobacco Prevention in Charleston. "In fact, the Camel Snus currently being marketed in West Virginia contains double the nicotine of an earlier tested version sold elsewhere in the United States. This provides a new example of the tobacco companies' manipulating nicotine levels without informing consumers." "West Virginia has extremely high rates of smokeless tobacco use and high rates of smoking," said Cindy Tworek, Ph.D., a member of WVU's Translational Tobacco Reduction Research Program (T2R2). "It would appear that tobacco companies are trying to strategically market new smokeless, spitless tobacco products in these areas of high use, such as West Virginia, and also promoting their use as a way to get nicotine in places where you can't smoke." T2R2 is a joint effort of the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center at WVU and the West Virginia Prevention Research Center. Tworek is conducting a survey of several hundred young adults on or around college campuses in West Virginia to see whether the product's marketing has scored a hit. She hopes to have results compiled early in 2009. Snus comes in a pouch [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T09:38:24-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Modestan who survived mouth cancer looks forward to Thanksgiving with family — and food

Source: www.modbee.com Author: Sue Nowicki This Thanksgiving, when Wenona "Wendy" Campbell sits down to a turkey dinner with all the fixin's, she will relish every bite. Last year, she couldn't eat a thing. A feeding tube prevented that. Campbell, 65, had been diagnosed with lymph node mouth cancer in September 2007. Doctors gave her only a 50-50 chance to live. Between October and the end of December, the Modesto resident had the most aggressive kind of chemotherapy combined with radiation treatments from her mouth down to her upper chest. Last Thanksgiving, she was in the midst of all of that. "Most people, 99 percent, who get mouth cancer have used some type of tobacco," Campbell said. "I'm the 1 percent. I never smoked, never chewed, never lived with a smoker. My doctor couldn't believe that I had mouth cancer." The first sign that something was wrong was a small lump on the side of her neck. "My family said it was probably just a swollen lymph node and that I'd be OK. Normally, I'd go to the doctor, but I was taking care of two parents with Alzheimer's. I hadn't placed them in (care) facilities at the time. My brother and I were trying to keep these sweet people in their home. "I was very foolish. After about a month, it had swollen to about the size of a pingpong ball. I did go to the doctor about halfway through that time. He said, 'This could be just an infection,' [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T09:31:33-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Iressa as good as chemotherapy for lung cancer

Source: health.usnews.com Author: Steven Reinberg The cancer-fighting pill Iressa works as well as chemotherapy as a second-line treatment for lung cancer, researchers report. Although neither therapy prolongs survival beyond eight months, Iressa (gefitinib) causes fewer serious side effects and may be a better choice for patients who did not do well on their first round of chemotherapy. "A pill, with less side effects, taken once a day, has similar activity to traditional chemotherapy given by vein every three weeks," said lead researcher Dr. Edward Kim, an assistant professor at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. This finding should reassure doctors that they are not compromising effective therapy by using a pill, Kim said. Iressa is not available in the United States, but a similar drug, Tarceva, is. Iressa was first developed by AstraZeneca, but it failed to meet expectations. The National Cancer Institute ended clinical trials of the drug in 2005 because it failed to prolong the lives of lung cancer patients. The latest finding has meaning for these patients, however, Kim said. "You can be treated for lung cancer. There are different therapies available, and they have different side-effect profiles," he said. "Chemotherapy will never be eliminated, but we are getting more options for targeted therapy; and people can live as normal a life as they can bearing the weight of lung cancer." The report was published in the Nov. 22 issue of The Lancet. In a head-to-head comparison, Kim's team randomly assigned 1,466 lung cancer patients [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T09:25:18-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|